She plunges into the starlit water, Silverpelt given form. It swirls around her, licking at her fur and splashing over her spine and against her skull. It is not wet, this water-that-is-not; her blasphemy leaves her dry as she wades deeper, her paws set upon their path.
The blood clings, angry, to her skin; there’s a perverse sort of pleasure in this, bringing filthy, unclean consequences to the dead. StarClan is beyond such trifles, or so they think; they believe themselves incapable of such inhumane acts as killing. Instead, they sit curled in their nests of stars and dispense judgment to those whose paths were not so unlike theirs, in their own lives.
She ducks her blood-covered muzzle into the pool, claws curling with grim satisfaction as the stars seem to writhe away, leaving the evidence of her crime in their wake. And hadn’t they drawn blood, once? Hadn’t they fought for their Clans, hadn’t they made mistakes, hadn’t they slit throats and cut open stomachs? Hadn’t they once been what they now condemn?
So feel it, those of you who think you are high and mighty and untouchable, she curses at the disturbed surface of earth-brought sky. Feel the mind given body, the ichor that spells life or death. Let it be ash amongst stars, soot smothering light. May you remember that you once lived, too; may you remember the trials of your days here walking the earth instead of the heavens.
The blood boils against her skin. The Moonpool is achingly, brutally cold, even though it’s not the icy water of leafbare that it should be. No, she is standing in a scraping of stars, unfeeling and frigid with distance. They had the capacity for warmth, or so she’d been taught, but what did kithood stories matter now? There is drying blood flaking from her muzzle; it is caked against her chest and clotting in her claws, and she feels nothing at all.Â
There have been times where she’s wondered if she was destined for hatred, born to it like her brothers were born to starlight and her mother and aunt and grandfather were born to walk in sunlight. The night embraces her and her paths, the cold dark wanderings of a lonely soul.
There’s a body behind her, positioned just so to let the blood from his wound pour into the Moonpool. It’ll be gone by sunhigh, taken somewhere no one will ever find it; or, if they did, not until it was bone and scraps of shriveled-up flesh.
Never let it be said that she doesn’t plan, doesn’t execute, doesn’t think.
What will her father say to her if he finds out that his little thinker had thought up a murder all on her own? That she’d brought the corpse into the Clans’ most sacred place, that even now she dared StarClan to intervene?
“Smite me!” she commands aloud, baring bloody fangs to the sky. “Or can you? All that wisdom—all that power cats think you command,” she laughs, “and you can’t do anything, can you? You can’t even cover the moon! Go on,” she grins at the full moon above her, the cloudless sky evidence of mistaken power. “Do it!”
She turns in circles in the pool, laughing incredulously. “You control no sky but your own,” she realizes. “And even that—ha, even there can you control your own borders? Any cats who don’t worship your light? Is he” — and she gestures explosively to the corpse, whose eyes she hadn’t even bothered to close — “among you now? Traitors, hypocrites, this whole system—”
She breaks off. She can’t feel her paws anymore; the feeling of cold-heat-cold has left them, leaving nothing in their wake. Such limited power for such absolute control. “Powers that the stars know not,” she murmurs, and turns another circle. “Or powers that the stars have never had? Could never have?”
Her fur feels damp in places. She glances up, startled; more time has passed than she had thought, and light has begun to seep through the gaps in stone and between the cover of bare branches. So StarClan can’t hold the power for long enough, even, to make it to the day, she thinks, the implications bringing her to a halt in the steadily warming water. The starlight can’t cool what it can’t see, and hazy clouds of red — the blood washing from dirtied paws — begin to rise in the pool.
Feeling bold, she rinses her muzzle in the water, wiping her face roughly with a paw to be rid of the blood. It would always be here, now, in this chosen space, in this sacred place.
She glances to the body; the red of its blood is a mire against the formerly-clear not-water, and she revels in it, the knowledge that StarClan can’t control even this. Weak, pathetic, powerless Hollyleaf; weak, pathetic, powerless StarClan. “We’re not so different,” she says to the water as the starlight continues to fade. “Will you ever admit it? I doubt it, but—” she breaks off, tilts her head, and does something she hasn’t dared to since she was six moons old, bright-eyed and so desperate to be important.
She drinks from the cold, bloodied waters of the pool.
Immediately, shapes begin to form around her, but they’re watered-down, weak in the growing sunlight, and they’re contaminated — red like the blood she’s spilling into them.
Their expressions are a mix — outrage, disbelief, downright fear; confusion, disgust, interest. She smiles at them, watches as they waver and try to remain even as daylight begins to streak through low-lying branches. “Nothing to say?” she goads, and gestures to the bloodless corpse. Only the barest trickle of fluid leaks from him now. “He’s not much for speaking, either, I’m afraid.”
The spirits flicker. Whether it’s from her statement or the blood in the water or the predator in their holy space or the sun itself rising, she doesn’t know.
What have you done? manages one, garbled. Her slate gray pelt wavers with every syllable.
“What you did, once,” she says easily.
Do you think we are to be trifled with? a blue-pelted molly manages.
“Hypocrite,” she accuses.
What do you think this will gain you? asks another, golden-pelted.
“What did compliance ever get you, Goldenflower?”
We are not your enemy! exclaims one more, silver-pelted with a plumy tail.
“Aren’t you?” she asks, curious now. “Wasn’t StarClan your enemy, when you were alive? Haven’t you all made choices that damned you in their eyes? Weren’t you different? Weren’t you hated? Weren’t you cast aside? Weren’t you asked to do the impossible? Didn’t you die in vain?”
They’re fading rapidly now. She can’t catch their body language, much less an expression.
I hope you don’t regret this, murmurs a spotted molly, the clearest of those remaining.
She casts her gaze to the corpse and back. “What would you have done?”
A hard look. This last shade is holding on, defiant in the face of all the defilement. What you did, Brindleface admits. Seasons ago.
“Would you have regretted it?”
Yes, comes the reply. And I do regret it for you. Your life will be harder now, Hollyleaf of ThunderClan, no matter which path you tread.
“I know,” she acknowledges. “Thank you.”
What you have done cannot be undone, Brindleface says, stepping forward onto the water. It holds her; she wonders if it’s determination — something not cited in tales, but it wouldn’t be, would it? — or her son’s own blood that holds her there. What you do now cannot be washed away either.
Silence, then. Brindleface’s form fades away, leaving her alone in bloody water.
But your life is not over, the soft voice comes once more. Make it count, Hollyleaf.
The sun crests the horizon, bathing the Moonpool in light. Anything left of Brindleface is gone, now, she knows, but—
“I will,” she promises empty air, empty water, empty sky. “I will.”
The sun rises still, and she will answer it in time. The moon deserves no such mercy.
